so copernicus was wrong and that scared copernicus into keeping quiet and it appears that. martin luther called copernicus a fool and his model was dismissed not so much as heretical but more as fantastical . it was only seventy years after his death that galileo's observations provide a convincing arguments. but the physical proof had to wait for another three hundred years nevertheless nicholas copernicus had provided the s. . a nominal model of our solar system and refuted the ancient scholar ptolemy and that in itself was revolutionary. the earth was ultimately removed from the center of the universe and classified as an ordinary planet that orbited the sun along with others. copernicus saw how the apparent motion of the stars in the night sky was really the result of the earth's own rotation. everything orbited the sun so the actual center of the solar system had to be near it. hardly any other discovery has had such a great influence on our time. our voyage to the stars began five hundred years ago without copernicus they would be no space flight all satellite communi